Computers and cell phones are the two primary ways that teens share the most private parts of their lives. If you are a parent who suspects that your child is abusing drugs or alcohol, the quickest way to find out is to learn as much as you can about your teen’s social networking devices and monitor their activity on a regular basis. Being a technically literate parent will help you to pickup substance abuse red flags.

The number of teenagers who carry a wireless device has increased by 40% in the last six years according to a national survey from CTIA and Harris Interactive. The survey goes on to say that 47% of teens feel their social life would end or be not nearly as good without their cell phone.

“My Space” and “Facebook” have been called a “year book on-line.” It has become a “tell all” for teens through their social networking comments and images. This year 48% of Americans ages 12 and older have profiles on one or more social networking websites, according to a national survey from Arbitron and Edison Research.

If you are a parent paying the bills for cell phones and internet usage, you reserve the right to enforce strict guidelines. Make sure your parenting toolbox includes monitoring your kid’s use of them, so you do not miss substance abuse red flags. This is not rocket science…it is simply good parenting.

This blog brought to you by the award-winning author www.MitziRudderow.com and her award winning book Coming Clean Together: Drug Addiction Help and Hope.

I believe that spiritual surrender is one of the most important tools in a parenting tool box but as we have learned, it is not an easy tool to use. Surrender takes discipline and practice, requiring us to recognize our denial and trust in a God we cannot physically see. When we use this tool effectively and choose to live a totally surrendered life, we are living a life that God can bless.

When I handed God my son and all the issues regarding his substance abuse, I put both of us in a position to receive the blessings that God wanted to give. Suddenly my stress level was lower because my worries were fewer. The more I surrendered the more dependent I was on God and I came to realize that God’s will was far better than mine.

My life is noticeably different today because I made the conscious decision to get out of God’s way and give him my only child. My son’s life is different as well. At the age of 23, he is married and the father of two, thriving in a career that he loves. Today my son and his wife are taking full responsibility for their individual lives and the life of their family…..one day at a time. They have goals and dreams and they have purpose together.

Someone once said, “if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans. If you want to make him smile, ask him for his.” My decision to let God take over the care of the greatest gift he has ever given me is definitely making him smile and blessing our whole family.

This blog brought to you by the awarding-winning author of Coming Clean: Drug Addiction Hope and Help.www.mitzirudderow.com.

James Dobson’s statement makes something I found so difficult, sound so easy. It was not until I had exhausted every option, could I successfully surrender my son’s addiction to God. The effects of my denial were causing me to rationalize, control, doubt and fear. The more I tried to manipulate my circumstances, the worse they got. I fought God for control, convincing myself that I couldn’t trust in someone I could not physically see…especially when his ways were not mine.

There were two giant roadblocks in my path that needed to be removed before I could successfully surrender my son’s addiction to God. They were denial and lack of trust. I needed to learn to trust in God and his ability to catch me as I fell. Once these two roadblocks were removed, and I realized that I didn’t have the strength to fix the problem alone, the beginnings of hope for my son’s addiction recovery began to appear.

One of the most notable verses about faith in the Bible is found in Hebrews ll:l. “Faith is being sure of what you hope for and certain of what you do not see.” What does your faith look like today? If you are a parent struggling with a teenager abusing drugs, you may be sure of what you hope for, but not 100% certain of what you do not see. God can remove the roadblocks on your path if you put your faith into action and choose to take the journey with him.

This blog brought to you by www.mitzirudderow.com, the Eric Hoffer award-winning author of Coming Clean: Drug Addiction Hope and Help.

Issac Watts once said , “hope thinks nothing is difficult; despair tells us that difficulty is insurmountable.” Hope is hard to find for parents who are living with the difficulty of teenage substance abuse. As my son battled between recovery and relapse, my emotions bounced like a yo-yo between hope and despair. Somewhere in the abyss of his drug and alcohol abuse, I needed to find hope.

I took my first steps towards spiritual surrender and hope when I realized that my faith needed to be an action rather than an option. Giving this crisis to God was a process that I didn’t learn overnight. There were some things about surrender that I needed to understand before I could successfully begin my journey. Here is what I learned:

Everyone struggles with surrendering…I am not alone.

We can’t surrender when we are in denial.

Surrender requires a personal relationship with God.

Surrender requires patience and trust in God’s timing…not our own.

When we are living a spiritually surrendered life, we are living a life that God can truly bless.

Once I had accepted these five basic principles, I was ready to take a giant leap of faith and begin my journey into this uncharted territory that promised hope.

Have you ever noticed how the flight attendant always instructs the parent to put the oxygen mask on themselves first before strapping it on their child? We can’t be of help to our children until we are parents with hope, equipped with the parenting tools to help them stay healthy and strong.

Join me next time when we take another step forward together and look at the roadblocks that prevent us from surrendering. If you are starring despair in the face, this will be a step of faith in the right direction.

This blog brought to you by the Eric Hoffer award-winning author www.MitziRudderow.com and her book Coming Clean: Drug Addiction Help and Hope.

All of my blogs have been devoted to giving drug addiction help but there is another aspect of this complicated issue called drug addiction hope. It is imperative that parents never loose hope when their teens are abusing drugs. But what happens when hope is gone? How do you find hope when your family is falling apart? The answer is found in a power much greater than ourselves.

Step three in The Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous tells us that in order for our circumstances to improve, we must “turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand Him.” This applies to the family of substance abusers as well as the abuser himself. I can attest to the fact that this step works if you apply it but it requires willingness and action.

I am a Christian so my understanding of God is through Jesus Christ. But even with Christ on my side, I didn’t find hope until I had stubbornly exhausted everything else. My self-sufficiency was the driving force behind my need to try and fix and control my son’s drug and alcohol abuse. When I finally hit my rock bottom, I realized that I could not improve my circumstances by myself. I needed help. “When God is all you have …God is all you need.” I had heard this expression before, but now I understood exactly what it meant.

Have you lost all hope? Are you drowning in frustration, resentfulness, and self-pity because your teen is using drugs? There is drug addiction hope when we completely surrender our circumstances to God. Join me next week when I show you how this worked for me!

For information on this author and her award-winning book Coming Clean: Drug Addiction Hope and Help, please visit www.mitzirudderow.com.

I always look forward to my blog comments. A recent reply has caused me to consider a new thought. Even when parents are married, parenting together, and doing everything right, their teens may still manage to fall into the trap of drug and alcohol abuse.

Case in point: Last week a mom shared with me that her son, who is an athlete, a leader in his school, and never had given his parents any trouble, recently came clean by confessing. He confessed to multiple drinking episodes over the course of several months. “We have done everything right” she explained “he has had the earliest curfew of any kid in the school, we have been diligent in setting rules and enforcing consequences.” Despite following all the right parenting tools, her son still had turned to alcohol abuse.

In my own experience (which did not include doing everything right), I finally had to hope and pray. What I found is that hope comes when I pray. But, if I was going to pray and ask God for help, I had to get out of his way and let go. This was difficult because it involved surrendering to God my most precious gift I have ever received in my life – my son.

In my next blog, I’m going to look closer at spiritual surrender but in the meantime…if you are using all the tools in your parenting toolbox, keeping plugging. If you teen still manages to fall through the cracks, chances are they won’t fall as far as they normally would because you are doing the right things. Keep hoping and praying. I know for a fact it works!

This blog brought to you by the Eric Hoffer Award Winning author of Coming Clean: Drug Addiction Help and Hope www.mitzirudderow.com.

A parenting tool that I feel very strongly about today, is same page parenting. Even in households where there has been a divorce, it is so important that both parents try to form a united front. It takes two parents to bring children into this world, and in most cases, it takes two parents to raise a child who is well balanced. Both parents need to be on the same page and work together for the sake of their child. This parenting tool is not just applicable to raising teens, either. Same page parenting prevents the chain from snapping and sends a clear message to your child that rules and boundaries are to be respected and obeyed.

To share some of my experience, the effects of my divorce on my son when he was only six became obvious when he began to abuse alcohol and drugs as a teenager. I found it interesting that the majority of my son’s friends came from divorced homes and I suddenly began to notice a pattern. He would migrate to households where there was little supervision, rules were loosely enforced, and there was no structure at all. You see, teenagers are master manipulators who make it their business to know who is the weakest link in the parental chain. This forced me to make decisions about Miller’s weekend plans based on the custody agreements of his friend’s parents, in an attempt to keep him safe and with the best parental supervision.

Even though 50% of all marriages end in divorce, parents still need to be on the same page and work together for the sake of their child. This is a tall order but our children are special gifts from God and we owe them our best. Same page parenting is an essential tool for your parenting toolbox and it and it applies to all parents regardless of their marital status.

This blog brought to you by award-winning author, Mitzi Rudderow, and her book Coming Clean: Drug Addiction Help and Hope.